


Icarus

by budchick



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family Bonding, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-14
Updated: 2014-01-14
Packaged: 2018-01-08 17:33:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,470
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1135473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/budchick/pseuds/budchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Mother's fulfilled her promise at last," Tom Riddle said, grinning widely as he struggled to get onto his feet. The blood pouring down over his broken nose and dripping over his teeth made his smile significantly more sinister than it would have otherwise been. "Does it hurt?"</p>
<p>"What, falling five-hundred feet from the sky?" Harry started, with a voice as sweet as burnt sugar. His broom was smoking in a pile next to him. "Why don't you try it and then come back and tell me?" he said, flat-toned, and then - "Gosh, why aren't you dead, I landed on you from five-hundred feet!"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Icarus

**Author's Note:**

  * For [IsysSkeeter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsysSkeeter/gifts).
  * In response to a prompt by [IsysSkeeter](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IsysSkeeter/pseuds/IsysSkeeter) in the [HarryMort_Prompt_Night](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/HarryMort_Prompt_Night) collection. 



> I was thinking of how Tom would've changed if his father was there and his mother wasn't. I was also trying to make this as Disney as possible while staying in character and look! Solid G-rating! Going up to PG if I'm lucky! Hey Isys, I hope you like :)
> 
> **Prompt:**
> 
> On the day of her death, Merope told her five years old son that she would send him a lover from the sky.  
> ten years later a boy fell on his arms coming from the sky  
> "Where did you came from?"  
> "The sky..."  
> tom looks at the sky, that was empty, and to the boy, pulling him to his chest, hugging him  
> "I'm Tom, and you're mine" he said, while looking at the sky and thanking his mother
> 
> (Magical World)  
> (Thomas Sr. didn't send Tom Jr. to Hogwarts, so Tom doesn't know about magic)  
> (Harry can have fallen from a broom or with apparation, whatever you wish)

:::

Tom Riddle Junior brought back a boy one day. It was unusual, because while the boy often met with his acquaintances and followers in town, he never brought any of them home.

Lord Riddle didn’t know what to make of his child. The mother had been a common woman, poor and without the appropriate lineage to match a person of his status. To this day, he doesn’t know what he had been thinking of when he met her. He didn’t even remember the first five years of their marriage, but everyone said he was in love.

The woman died a decade ago, but her legacy lived on in every corner of the manor, in the silent footprints over his heart and mind, and in the boy she left behind. Looking at little Tom was like looking into a cracked mirror full of his faults – but the boy had been five at the time. He could not leave a child to fend for itself. There would be societal repercussions. Children were meant to be malleable.

He had a list of reasons for keeping the child then.

“Father,” little Tom said. “My friend will stay with me in my chambers.”

Tom’s ‘friend’ awkwardly pushed up his glasses and tried to smile. He was dressed in what looked like a bathrobe. He carried a broom which lagged behind him and was no doubt tracking in dirt from the great outdoors.

“But we haven’t been introduced yet,” Lord Riddle replied with a deceptively genteel expression. “Is our guest tired from his walk? Does our guest care for scones and tea?”

“Err, no, that’s okay,” Tom’s friend said, but Lord Riddle was insisting and little Tom made a truly malcontent sound as his friend settled onto the couch.

The servants came by and placed a plate of biscuits on the table. To his credit, the boy didn’t immediately take one. Instead, Tom's guest was looking back at him, the lord of the manor, studying him as if he were looking upon a king from the pages of history. As if the slightly broken shell of an aristocratic man merited just as much attention as this poor boy who had captured his son's attention.

“You have the advantage,” the lord began. “Might I know your name?”

“I'm Harry Black. It's a pleasure to meet you,” the boy said.

"Is that your name," his son replied conversationally. "You could have told me on the way here, instead of descending into useless hysterics."

Did his son kidnap a stranger? The boy - Harry - didn't seem to be nobility; he was too free with his emotions and his posture. Nevertheless, his social graces were passable and Riddle Senior felt a kindred sympathy for anyone who interacted with his son. And ... he seemed kind. After little Tom and Cecilia, that counted for a lot these days.

"How did you meet my son?" he asked.

"We met on the way into town," his son responded before Harry could. Little Tom was drumming his fingers silently, refusing to even consider the refreshments. Riddle Senior watched the way his shoulders were taught with barely restrained tension, the way his eyes never left Harry's face, and darkly thought that he recognised trouble.

"On the grassy hills overlooking the chapel. I was watching the service from above, and he ran into me."

"The nine o'clock service?" He knew only because Cecelia used to go; both father and son were barred from the church. It was five in the evening now.

"And how did it come to the point where my son is inviting you into his bed after eight hours of acquaintance?"

"What?" Little Tom finally threw him a look, one that promised pain if he dared to continue with this line of enquiry. It had to be done. Riddle Senior wasn't concerned with the shattered windows, the warped furniture that occurred whenever his son was displeased; it was better to deal with broken vases than let Tom get his way all the time. Neither was Riddle Senior concerned with who Tom brought into his bed; it was difficult enough trying to mitigate Tom terrifying the servants and frankly, he had priorities. He wasn't asking for Tom's sake.

"I distinctly heard Tom say that you were to be staying with him."

Harry's face was a study in shock. It was strangely reassuring.

"No! Merlin! I'm just in a bit of a difficult situation and Tom said I could stay the night. I told him 'no', but it's been made clear that I'd probably be sleeping with the Nargles otherwise."

Nargles? "It was very kind of you to offer young Harry your room," Riddle Senior said, while also thinking about how uncharacteristic it was, "and I really wish you had spoken to me about it first. But there's no need to squeeze two people into one bed." He turned back to Harry and said, "we have plenty of guest rooms. You're welcome to any of them."

Harry smiled in relief, short and sweet. Tom Riddle Senior smiled back, grimly thinking of the need to lock everyone's doors tonight.

:::

The woman's death was like waking from a morphine dream, swimming through memories glazed with sunshine and smoke. In the end when she'd been listless and coughing up blood, she sent not for her husband, but for little Tom. She didn't speak to her husband at all in the last week she was alive, and later, he thought that maybe she didn't care to.

They burned the body.

One night, several months after he had woken up, little Tom came to his rooms. He was six. Tom Riddle Senior had been with Cecelia then, catching up with small-town gossip, organising his funds and his thoughts in a small black ledger. When Cecelia quietened, he looked up, and Tom was there.

"Little Tommy?" Cecelia asked, after looking at the lord of the manor.

Tom said nothing. His eyes were as dark as a raven's, and his hair was starting to curl. Even then a stranger could tell that he would grow up to be beautiful.

"What are you doing away from the playroom?"

"I'm hungry," he said.

World War II had started, and everything was being rationed to the bone, but Riddle Manor had a pear tree outside the ballroom which Cecelia liked to visit. She had a basket of red-orange pears, and she pulled one out and gave it to him.

"You can have that."

In Greek and Roman mythology, pears were sacred to two goddesses; Hera and Aphrodite. They were a symbol of femininity and a tree would be planted for every girl that was born, to protect her from evil. To the ancient Chinese, they were a symbol of immortality.

He took the pear from her and began to chew on it with his little white teeth.

"Do you like it?"

He nodded. Cecelia had never liked Tom, had never been sure what to make of the boy, who was always too quiet and too knowing for her liking, but the room had been warm and gently a-glow with light, and maybe she softened when she saw that Tom could be like any other child. Gently, she ran her fingers through Tom's baby-fine hair, which he took with patience, and when that was done, she went down and stroked his cheek with the back of her fingers. He looked at her, and in a flash, snapped at her, sinking his teeth into the flesh underside her hand.

Cecelia shrieked, and the room echoed with her pain and surprise. She raised her other hand, ready to slap him, but her eyes focused on the pears in her basket and she stopped. From their red-orange colour, they had turned to a bright gold, and then as Tom licked the blood from her fingers, they turned brown and began to wither in their spots.

When Tom finished, he left the room. It didn’t erase the evidence they saw with their own eyes; his contract with the powers below, and that power had scared both the lord of the manor and Cecelia more than the blood dripping onto the floor. As they bandaged her hand, Cecelia was weeping and crossing herself, shoulder, shoulder, head, chest, and Tom Riddle Senior knew that she wouldn't be coming back.

:::

The boy seemed distant, but happy enough when Lord Riddle visited his door before dinner.

"Hi, did you need anything?" Harry said, opening the door. "Thanks for giving me the keys to the doors. Aren't you worried that I'll steal something?"

Riddle Senior smiled without humour. "I could do with less of these useless decorations around here. Do you mind if I came in to talk?"

Harry sat on the bed while he took the bedside chair. His eyebrows were furrowed, and he was once again looking over the lord.

"I'll not waste your time with small-talk. The keys are for your protection," Riddle Senior said bluntly. "My son is a master of masks. He is deceptive, manipulative, and cruel." He was going to go on and tell Harry to leave in the morning, but Harry stopped him.

"I know," he said, one arm over bent legs, taking a quick glance at the time-keeper on the wall. It was frustrating to see the boy treat his safety with such impudence.

"I am afraid for you!"

"He's an egomaniac, right?" Harry said, looking at him. "He's more attractive and intelligent than the people around him and he thinks that this makes him better than everyone else. He hates everyone, although he doesn't let on and I bet he treats the servants like shit."

The boy shifted on the bed again, crossing his arms and laying his head on them. "That would be alright, if he didn't like hurting things too. I mean - if you're rude and up yourself, you're kind of a dick, but you're still okay with most people as long as you don't try to actively torture or kill anyone. I'm guessing he's blurring that line."

For once in his life, Riddle Senior had been made completely speechless. "He told you all of this?"

Harry's eyes shifted. "No, not really. We were kind of arguing all the way here, actually." The boy seemed to struggle with himself a bit, but then he continued.

"At first I thought that he was visiting the manor, intent on meeting you, but it looks like you guys have known each other for some time. It's confusing... because it doesn't match up-" he hesitated here, but Lord Riddle only waited patiently. "What made you go and look for him?"

"Look for him?" he repeated.

"At the orphanage," Harry said. "How'd you find him?"

"He's never been at an orphanage," Riddle Senior replied, confused. "I ... had something of an affair with his mother and she died when he was five. He's lived with me ever since."

Harry's eyes were bug-open. "And he hasn't tried to kill you yet?"

"I hope he's learnt better than to try that," Riddle Senior responded, standing up. The conversation was over. The man had done his bit; he'd warned the boy. The last one had tried to hang herself from the wooden planks in the town hall. 

:::

Harry had not left by the next morning. Instead, he was sitting at the breakfast table, looking at his surroundings in utter bemusement. His son was also there, and judging by the intent looks he kept sending the boy's way, had not yet lost interest in his newest obsession.

Lord Riddle sighed inwardly - it would've been better for Harry to leave happily of his free will than eventually run screaming from the manor as many were wont to do - but he put on a smile. He learned then, that Harry was an orphan, that his parents had died under mysterious circumstances, that he had left his home in a bit of a hurry and so, he had nothing on him but the clothes on his back.

"And a broomstick," Harry said sheepishly.

He had no other family alive at the moment.

"You'll have to stay with us then," Tom said, "until you can get back on your feet."

"I can cook and clean," Harry added. "I don't want to be a burden on you."

It would have been cruel to turn the boy out. Lord Riddle figured the boy would leave by himself eventually.

"Report to the cook in an hour." That old lady would hopefully keep the boy busy.

:::

The story of the manor's haunting was a very popular one amongst the townsfolk. The first allegedly strange occurrence arose in 1931. Tom's mother had been dead for a month at the time.

It started off very small. ('Nothing is ever where I put it!' the cook cried out in frustration. 'Old age happens to the best of us,' her Lord replied.) On November 7, a maid noted a strange light emanating from a cupboard. Believing that someone had accidentally left a candle inside, she opened it - only to find that the cupboard was empty. The shelves were clean. There was nothing inside it that could have possibly caused the light.

On November 9, another girl's sewing kit disappeared. Lord Riddle didn't worry about it, until the needles from the sewing kit reappeared in a bottle of vintage wine. They clinked against the glass of the champagne flute as the wine was poured out, looking deceptively innocent in the sunlight.

It escalated from there.

Doors that opened and closed, although there was no wind in the house. Stainless steel mirrors found melted into grotesque shapes, chandeliers which inexplicably broke as a person of importance stood underneath. The sensation of being watched by something unseen. The knives were always missing.

It set the servants against each other - most of them believed that someone was being a prankster and causing extra work for them. There were whispers of a ghost then, but the large majority were far too practical to believe in something as unreasonable as a ghost.

Then came the day where Lord Riddle and the guests for an important party entered the antechamber, only to find that all the furniture in the room had flipped upside down, in a wonderful display of defying gravity. The guests retired to their bedrooms shortly after that and found decapitated chickens in their sheets. Little Tom cheerfully waved 'goodbye' as the guests ran out the door.

The number of social visits to the manor sharply declined after this incident.

:::

It happened again during the afternoon. The cutlery floated onto their positions on the table, and Lord Riddle prepared himself for the usual strain of hysterics. Harry merely took the fork up and began eating. After a moment, Tom did the same.

Lord Riddle frowned. He felt inexplicably, cheated.

:::

_“Tom, wait. Say that again?”_

_“Did I mispronounce a word? I suppose you could be a German kamikaze fighter pilot ejecting from a plane, in which case I apologise for my presumptions.”_

A pause.

_“You knew my name before I ever gave it to you. And Mother said you would come out of the sky on that date. You are my lovely Icarus, who has fallen out of the sky. Your coming was prophesised.”_

_“Godric.”_  The sound of a head hitting a desk. _“Go and talk to your dad, maybe he’ll knock some sense into you.”_

:::

"Mother made me a prophecy," Tom opened that night, as he walked into his father's study. He arranged himself in the seat across the table and crossed his fingers as though he is preparing for a battle. "She told me, ten years ago, that although she couldn't be here for me, she would send me a person in her place."

"The dead cannot uphold their promises," Lord Riddle said in reply. He looked over his papers. "I hope you are not disappointed."

Tom shrugged.

"That's true. But things being what they are, a person has arrived on the day that she has specified, in the manner that she has specified. Evidently, she was not entirely the madwoman that I, and the town, had thought her to be, and so I ask for your opinion."

"Coincidence."

"There are more things than dreamed of in your philosophy," Tom said.

It would be a lie to say that there was no such thing as magic, so Riddle Senior said instead, with the greatest of scorn: "There is no place for the supernatural in our universe." The idea was appalling.

"Of course not," Tom said immediately. "But what may appear to be supernatural is merely science that we don't yet understand. If you could tell me more about her - her genetic roots for example - perhaps I could form a theory. You never speak of her."

"Because there is nothing to talk about," Riddle Senior replied truthfully. He didn't know the woman.

:::

_“Did you speak to your father?”_

_“He told me nothing. I have decided that it must be true: green is my favourite colour and Mother made your eyes just right.”_

_“Delusional. Delusional and narcissistic. What a catch.”_

:::

"I've been meaning to ask," Harry said. "About Tom's mother. She’s not in any of the photos or paintings on the walls."

Twice in a day. "I have nothing to say about her."

"Merope Gaunt. You rode by her place every morning, did you know? She was watching you from the window."

Riddle Senior narrowed his eyes, remembering Tom's confession. Harry, whom Tom’s mother had apparently gifted to Tom. Did Harry know more about those missing years of his life?

He threw them a bone. “The first time I met her, we were at the markets. She stood with her father and brother, and I admit, I did not take much notice of her.”

“What made you notice her?” Little Tom asked and no, this was not what he wanted to encourage.

“I’ll bring out the baby photos,” he said as a warning.

Tom looked mildly disconcerted for a moment. “You don’t have baby photos.”

“Mmhmm.”

It was enough to stop his son from asking any more stupid questions.

:::

There were voices in the kitchen.

“… and for the last time, stop it with the pet names! My name isn’t Icarus. It’s Harry. H-A-R-R-Y.”

“I understand,” Tom said with all the gravity of a funeral march. “’Icarus’ carries the implication that you are mortal, when a person who falls from heaven is anything but. You are my great morning star, my Lucifer. My foretold fiancé, my sworn saviour.”

“... Look, I'm really sorry that I landed on you," Harry said. The slightest tinge of annoyance coloured his voice. “You are not God. I am not a demon or an angel sent by your mom and I am _definitely_ _not_ any of those alliterations or anagrams you enjoy so much, you _creepy fucktard_."

Riddle Senior allowed himself a slight twinge of the lips. If Tom had ever bothered talking to his father about his romantic interests instead of all this questioning about his mother, Lord Riddle would have told Tom that lines like that never, ever go down well.

Little Tom took Harry everywhere. They've been spotted regularly enough in town that Cecelia and her parents have called, wondering who Tom's playmate was (and how he'd lasted for longer than a week). They went fishing and come back with three whole ducks. "I figured if we were going to kill them, then we should at least make an effort to eat them too," Harry told him.

They were delicious.

:::

"Do you have any pictures of her?" Tom asked.

:::

:::

:::

Harry Evans defied everyone's expectations and went from ‘I'll stay here for the night' to three nights to three weeks and counting. He managed to keep his son's attention on him for all that time.

The servants grumbled a little about doing extra laundry, but for the most part, were overjoyed. 'The flush of a first love', they say, speaking of Tom's bright eyes as they track his new toy like a puppy.

It had other side effects. It seemed as though those things that haunted the house had died down – as though the spirits themselves were pleased with Harry’s acquaintance with Tom. The townspeople also stopped looking at Tom like he was an eldritch abomination from the fifth circle. Instead they started talking about how devoted Tom is, how gallant, how charming. How lovely it was that little Tom had finally grown out of his attention-seeking behaviour - as though Tom's fifteen years of sociopathy were nothing more than childish misdemeanours - and how Tom was finally growing into his position as Little Hangleton's Lord.

They seemed to have forgotten everything that Tom had wrecked and destroyed in the town, simply because Tom now appeared as fallible as the rest of them.

The Lord of the Manor said nothing about it. He was still waiting for the punch line.

"Tom is the right age for it now," his father, Tom's grandfather said.

“The right age for what?"

"Marriage."                                                                                                                                                                                

Lord Riddle looked at his father with despair. Outside, Tom grinned and asked for, 'if you do not mind, a description of your school in heaven.' Harry shot Tom Riddle Senior a look.

:::

The thing was: he still had Tom's letter. 'We are pleased to inform you that you have a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.' It was on the mantelpiece, under the square base of the urn that holds Merope's ashes.

For reasons which are uncertain, Tom's eyes always pass by that delicate porcelain object, as though it did not exist. For that reason, the letter remains hidden.

:::

All good things come to an end eventually.

The snake is a common garden variety. The gardener had left the premises yelling about plants with teeth (good heavens knows what that was about), and so the grounds had been neglected for some months.

Tom was not afraid of snakes. He hissed to it and looked to the other boy to gauge his reaction. Lord Riddle is waiting.

Harry only laughed. He began hissing to the snake as well and little Tom stared, enraptured, as if wondering how anyone could be so perfect.

His father - finally understood why Harry wasn't daunted by any of those strange things which happened around the house. He was one of *them.*

:::

"I saw you both in the garden," he told Harry.

"Yes," Harry said. "Hey, Tom's been talking about growing some useful plants, and my aunt taught me how to grow things. I can weed the place a bit if you need me to."

Lord Riddle shook his head. "I want you out of the house by nightfall."

Harry looked stunned. He opened his mouth to say something - but Lord Riddle stopped him with one hand raised.

"You asked me before what made me go and look for him in an orphanage, and I told you he was never in one. I didn't tell you: he almost was. One person is enough. I _do not_ need another person like his mother in my house." His eyes glittered. "You get out and you take your curse with you. Don’t make me throw you out."

:::

Harry left the next day. A vase flung itself into the wall. A bronze statue. The cutlery. The fine china.

Tom didn’t talk to his father. He was a shadowy creature who encroached on the edge of Lord Riddle's existence, a ghost who lingered around the house and terrified the servants.

:::

August the 7th. Mr Bennett, the stable master and his daughter, Agnes, noted that a three-year-old horse 'Cherish' had not returned to the ranch at the usual time for her water - unusual, given the temperatures of the day.

Agnes found Cherish two days after. Her head and neck had been skinned and defleshed, the bones were white and clean. There was no blood at the scene, according to Agnes, and a strong oily scent pervaded the air.

Riddle Senior came home after a long day with the major and church. His son was sitting in an armchair by the fire, seemingly content with reading a book.

"Tom. What happened?"

His son flipped a page. No answer.

"Tom."

"What makes you think it was me?" Tom asked.

"A horse turns up dead. The head is missing. Upon further investigation, it has no internal organs and its reproductive organs have been removed but there are no obvious points of entry. Suspicious circumstances, found dumped in an area with no tracks leading to or from the carcass, everyone talking about it being the work of the devil - of course it was you!" Lord Riddle yelled. "What happened Tom, I thought you were getting better."

“What do you think?” Tom hissed. “Those things too weak to seek power deserve their fates.”

Riddle Senior only looked at the sky. “I have no idea why I didn’t leave you to the asylum,” he replied.

Tom picked up his book and quietly slithered into his room.

:::

"I heard what happened." Harry said.

"That my son is a monster?"

"He can't control it. He needs to learn.”

Lord Riddle laughed. “Are you telling me how to raise my own son? You, who did the same thing to him as _she_ did to me? IT will fade. It will die. Our family will be better off without it and if you ever come back again, I will make you regret it.”

The boy appeared shocked. “You think I bewitched him?”

In Lord Riddle’s honest opinion; Harry didn’t seem the sort. In comparison to cold, quietly-intelligent Tom, Harry with his kind smile and glasses seemed overwhelmingly, refreshingly average. But why would his son be so different? In all his years, Tom had never made as much of an effort to speak to his father as he did now. His son is a sociopathic creature who thrives on the suffering of others. Since Harry had arrived, he had – been patient, less arrogant, less of an island in a sea of connections, and there was something in him that seemed to have – relaxed. The only answer: bewitching.

“You think I came in and turned him all around, changed him,” Harry repeated again, as though the idea was so novel and strange he could not comprehend it.

It was nearly the end of summer. The leaves on the trees near the balcony were beginning to turn brown. When the wind blew, several of them broke off from their stems and flew away. It must have been the sound of that gentle autumn breeze, the image of those leaves disappearing into the horizon which stole Tom Riddle Senior’s voice.

“Do you know what I see when I look at him?” Harry asked. “I don’t see a monster. I see a boy who lost his mother and wants desperately for proof she loved him. A boy who is stuck in a town that is too small to contain him, who is so _lonely_ , he pinned all his hopes on a dead woman's _vague prophecy_. I opened him up. I didn’t change a thing about him – this has _nothing_ to do with me at all. If he appears to be less human, less himself, it is because of this unrequited love he has for a father who does not accept him and has never tried to understand him at all.”

Harry’s eyes could be as warm as green grass on a summer’s day. They could also be as deep and cold as emeralds.

“He needs you. And you need to make the right decisions.”

:::

"The cuts are very well done," Lord Riddle said, inviting his son into the study. The horse’s corpse laid on the desk. He tried to keep his tone as open-minded and as non-judgmental as possible.

The darkness in Tom's eyes lifted for a second then, to reveal a universe of stars.

"I've practiced a bit."

"Your 'practice bits’,” Lord Riddle said politely, although his stomach was threatening to turn. “I should like to see them as well."

Tom looked at him for a second, judging his tone, and finding it acceptable, invited his father to a plot behind the house. There was an old garden shed there.

Before his father’s eyes, he drew forth from the shed a menagerie of art-house horrors; cats with missing eyelids and paws, birds with broken wings and no legs. One calf was completely eviscerated, as if by a large machete blade and then, by smaller, more delicate scissors.

“These are all of them,” Tom said, laying them onto the ground.

Lord Riddle looked at these carcasses, some dried, some still dripping. Took another deep breath and pinched the bridge of his nose. Priorities. The first priority was to establish what on Earth was happening. Why it was happening. Then once that was done, they could work on fixing the problem. Lord Riddle only hoped that it was a problem he could fix.

“Tom,” he began. “I need to know if you are doing it for fun, if you are doing it because you are bored, if you are doing it because you are curious.”

“I’m aware that this looks extremely – not-good –  but this is not my fault,” Tom said. The blood had caught under his fingernails.

“Talk.”

“They were dead already,” Tom said. “It shouldn’t matter what happens to them once they are dead and I thought it would be a waste if I threw them away. This way I get to practice.”

“Practice what? Taxidermy?”

“It,” Tom replied.

“It.”

Tom was getting frustrated now. “It! The thing that _my_ mother gave _me_ , the reason why you won’t talk about her!”

“You need to stop. Tom, do you understand, you need to stop and never do this again.”

“You are asking me to do something that is impossible. I can’t control it! I walk out and my emotional state is a contagion. It harms, it takes, and it destroys. I don’t do anything, they simply – die. It died in front of me, like this, and I thought – why not?”

Because once something dies, most people leave it alone, his father thought. They bury it. They don’t take it home for experiments.

“I was getting better,” Tom continued. “Harry was showing me – he showed me how to do a few things. I fixed the glass in the sun room. I don’t belong here. You should let me go with Harry or you should let me join the war and I’ll die and no one needs to know about it. Father please. I can’t do this anymore.”

Tom Riddle Senior felt old then. The things he sacrificed for this boy – Cecelia. The once-close relationship he had with his parents, John and Mary. The social parties, his bible group at the Church. He thought of that letter, with swirling letters on old parchment, stamped with ‘Hogwarts’ under the urn.

“The word for it is ‘magic.’”

And finally, the letter underneath the urn was opened.

:::

Tom looked splendid in his Hogwarts uniform. At King's Cross, he was easily the tallest out of his cohort and he attracted a great deal of attention from those surrounding him.

He paid them no mind. Too busy chatting with Harry.

Riddle Senior thought of the nine months at the house by himself, and wondered what he would do with all the spare time. He looked at the boy he'd raised and instinctively, his arms move up to enfold him in a hug.

Tom allowed the contact with the strangest expression on his face. His eyes wandered to Harry, who was laughing at how incredibly awkward the both of them were, until he realised that they were so awkward at this because they’d had no practice at it. This exchange of positive social contact is their first.

Lord Riddle let go just as quickly, without ever betraying the sense of disbelief he felt. He retreated to the parent’s section of the platform and watched on.

With that done, Tom turned to Harry. He had an image of his partner's face drawn into his diary, and still Tom couldn't resist the urge to keep looking at Harry's face in real-time. Harry, who was going to go home, because he had a family he would miss and good friends who would miss him. Harry was easily the greatest treasure he had ever had the pleasure of possessing; however, Icarus knew that men who went against the elements of nature would fall down in flames and Harry - did not belong where he was. 

"I don't suppose I'll be seeing you again," Tom said to Harry as the train began to whistle. 

Harry laughed. "Yeah you will," walking backwards and calling out on his way to King's Cross proper. As Harry's body began to disappear into the air, Tom heard:

“Because you and me? We’re prophesised! It’s destiny!”

:::

END.

:::

 


End file.
